MU athletic department apologizes after ‘diversity and inclusion’ tweet is criticized
The Missouri athletic department took down a tweet intended to promote the NCAA’s “diversity and inclusion week,” then issued an apology after receiving backlash.
The now-deleted tweet on the Mizzou Athletics account depicted three athletes and one MU athletic department staff member.
The post showed Arielle Mack (track and field), Chelsey Christensen (gymnastics), CJ Kovac (swimming and diving) and Chad Jones-Hicks, a ticket office assistant, according to a staff directory.
Next to pictures of the athletes was a prompt that said: “I am more than a student athlete.” For Jones-Hicks, it said “I am more than a staff member.”
The negative reactions stemmed from the answers to the prompt. Mack’s answer was “I am an African-American woman” and Jones-Hicks’ was “I value equality.” Both Mack and Jones-Hicks are black. The answers from the two white athletes, though, were “I am a future doctor” for Christensen and “I am a future corporate financer” for Kovac.
The backlash included criticism of the screening process to the tweets, also questioning the diversity of the social media staff in charge of the account. Other complaints pointed out the 2015 protests against racism on campus and MU’s history with race relations.
“Earlier we made a mistake when we posted a graphic about our student athletes,” read the apology tweet on @MizzouAthletics. “We apologize. Our intent was to provide personal information about our students, but we failed. We listened and removed the post. This video better represents our intent to celebrate our diversity.”
Other tweets featuring members of the athletic department were still on the Twitter page as of Thursday afternoon, with quotes and varying prompts.
The NCAA’s diversity and inclusion week spans from Oct. 22-25. The goal of the campaign is to use social media to “create a dialogue on diversity and inclusion and to communicate the benefit of inclusive environments to the student-athlete experience,” according to the NCAA website.
Other schools around the country posted similar “more than a student-athlete” tweets along with the hashtag #NCAAInclusion.
This story was originally published October 24, 2019 at 2:32 PM.